TK: Hello and welcome to the Dicerra podcast where our passion is human performance in healthcare and aviation. Today, very excited to have Billie Flynn who is a legend in Canadian aviation. In fact, a legend in aviation internationally. A former fighter pilot from the Canadian Air Force, a former commanding officer of 441 Squadron, a test pilot, both on the civilian side and on the military side having been involved in test programs with the Eurofighter and more recently, the F-35. Flown over 80 different types of aircraft. Just an incredible flying career that I think anybody who is involved in aviation would be envious of. So I’m going to turn it over to Billy to give a bit of an introduction. Obviously, you’ve only given a CliffsNotes and there’s a lot more to it than that. But before I do, just recognize that this year is the 25th anniversary of Operation Allied Force in Kosovo, and Billy was the commanding officer of the Canadian fighter force for Operation Allied Force. So, Billy, if you don’t mind, maybe you can give us a little bit of a background. What took you from the early days of aviation through to being the commander of the fighter force of Allied Force and then from that point onwards to being now a leading authority on the F 35. 

Billie: Sure, TK thanks for the invite to come chat today. I look forward to talking about all things aviation, and wherever this goes. Look, I started luckily, having a father who was a fighter pilot, he flew F-56 sabers, and by the time I knew to look at airplanes, he was flying CF-100s and then 101 Voodoos. I grew up in fighter bases, and on Sundays, as I like to say, after church, we go to the hangar and sit in fighter jets and, and play around my brother and I and oh, by the way, my dad would give us the cookies and the juices that were supplied to them by the Air Force, which Oh, you know, 30 years later, when I was a Squadron Commander, they were the same cookies and the same juices that were supplied by the military, for snacks. And I grew up around jets and I assume now that that’s what I always wanted to do. Ended up in the military college system in Canada at CMR, south of Montreal for three years, and then for an engineering degree at RMC in Kingston. I’m blessed with throughout my career, incredible impatience but extraordinary timing. I went to pilot training and I came out of there selected as the guinea pig, the first Pipeliner in the United States, we call them nuggets to the first pipeline are picked to fly the CF-18 even before we had the aircraft in country. I was told Secretly, I was going to be the guy and came out of there and went to Cold Lake, Alberta, biding my time and patiently and then fit into the course that became course number 1 on the CF-18. On the first squadron which is 409. My Lists of firsts of lucky positions went on first, scrap, first Alert out of Bagotville because the tail cracks happened in our squadrons. Roll the six month delay, first person to go out chase a Bear off the coast of Newfoundland, at some ungodly hour, you know, four in the morning by myself because my flight lead aborted. First deployment to Europe of the CF-18 again, because of the delays when we went and populated. The three squadrons replaced them the three squadrons with 104s with CF-18s. I did cool things over there. Like I flew the CF-18 at the Paris Air Show in 1987. We’ll come back to why that matters later on. And then I got picked to Test Pilot School and patiently wanted to go I made the mistake early in my career of reading the book: „The Right Stuff“, which just the bug of you know, those guys were God, like, the Chuck Yeager era. Scott Crossfield, and then every one of that, that era of test pilots were overbearing guys, you know, once every couple of weeks, certainly once a month, but they did amazing things in the world of exploration and discovery and I wanted to be one of them. I am blessed with the audacity of hope, as Barack Obama used to call it. My enthusiasm overcomes my defects. I was a stunningly bad student at Military College. The only thing I cared about was varsity football and having fun in Kingston and not paying attention. And I did wake up at some point realized if you want to be a fighter pilot you need to be number one you need to study so I took that but but those bad marks carried me right through to selection Test Pilot school. And after many tries to get in eventually the career managers gave up sent me to Patuxent River, go to the US Navy Test Pilot School. And from there again, extraordinary timing, the exchange officer at Edwards Air Force Base at the time decided that there was nothing left to do in the F-16. It was about 23 years into the life of the F-16. He thought that was all over he retired and went to Air Canada. And so I left I was pulled out of Pax River after grad and sent to Edwards Air Force Base to live an extraordinary five years flying the F-16 flying with NASA down the road. You call it NASA Armstrong now back then was NASA Dryden. I did thrust vectoring in the F-16. I flew the F-18 that had thrust vectoring paddles, I flew against the X-31 that had thrust vectoring paddles, I flew in an F-18 lived an extraordinary life there back Canada. Hated my life on the ground. And then again, extraordinary timing that commanding officer of one of the squadrons went to Air Canada. And I don’t know where I was picked by become the CEO of 441 Squadron. Very storied, incredible history of the squadron. And I always hated them when I wasn’t on them. And all of a sudden I became the commanding officer of the Silver Foxes. And oh, by the way, foxes eat eggs. And so I spent two years as commanding officer eating lots of raw eggs and social events. And again, extraordinary timing. My squadron became the lead squadron enrolled into the timing that ultimately had us deploy three days before combat broke out in Operation Allied Force. I’ll come back to that later. I retired at the end of my squadron commander tour, hired or poached to go fly Eurofighter Typhoon. I did that for four years in Munich, Germany of the foreign nation consortium at the beginning of its lifetime in the very dark days of Eurofighter. And then F-35 was won by Lockheed and I had a great relationship back to my F-16 days at Edwards, and was hired by Lockheed first to fly F-16E and F models. They were sold to the United Arab Emirates, we call them block 60. Two years of research doing automatic ground collision avoidance at NASA Dryden in an F-16. As part of a skunkworks team, legendary work by the team to mature the technologies of automatic ground collision avoidance, which will probably come to talk to and then F-35 for 10 years. I live at Pax River, Maryland, when I’m here in the States is where I was posted for 10 years, I flew all three models. I was the global spokesman for the F-35. First F-35 Air Show in 2017, at the Paris Air Show, 30 years after I’d been there in the CF-18, and had an amazing career and in every part of F-35’s development and now blessed to live a normal life with my family. I’d say my life is much fuller, much broader than it was in the 40 years of flying. And I’m lucky to transition to this place now. And happy to chat today about all things F-35. But also, you know, the world of aviation safety and, and all those things I’ve learned just by experience, certainly not by wisdom, but by experience in the different cultures that I’ve been a part of. So that’s the very long introduction to where I come from.

TK: I have a lot of questions for that. First, I should say for the listeners that aren’t aware, the Bear that Billy was talking about chasing was a Russian bomber, and not a four legged variety. But I assume people are aware when you were working on the auto GCAS project, we had a test pilot up on an exchange here from the USAF fairly recently, Casey Fletch Richardson, who was also involved in the auto GCAS. I guess he must have crossed paths, perhaps with him while you’re on the project. 

Billie: So let’s get a little bit of history. I remember listening to research papers that have groups at Edwards Air Force Base. So Air Force based, when I say Air Force, I’m always talking about the US Air Force. Air Force Base for research projects, trying to mature the technology and trying to get it into aircraft. And if you go back 25 years or 30 years ago, that they had the technology but the hardware was cumbersome and it was uber expensive to go to go retrofit airplanes and we were killing a lot of guys. But the conversation just wasn’t compelling enough to leaders when they had to offset you know, weapons and and new airplane technologies with what was effectively thought of as just a better safety belt or an airbag and it just didn’t earn its way into the fighter community back then. And in 2009, I was pulled from regular flying at Lockheed Martin to be part of the skunkworks team matched with the Air Force Research Labs, AFRL, here in the United States. And then NASA Dryden. So the NASA-like research facility at Edwards Air Force Base, where there were experts that had spent years working on this technology. And in these teams all knew each other. But we were put together, we were given two-seat F-16. And our mandate was go mature the technologies and at that time, luckily for us technologies, like really sophisticated navigation that came with GPS mixed with inertial navigation systems, so you know what it is, but to your listeners, it’s our ability to use the GPS that you effectively have in your iPhone, which didn’t really exist before, all of a sudden, we had great position, we knew where he were, because the GPS was really accurate. Everybody has Google Earth, at home, on their computers or even on our, on my iPhone. But go back many years, the the terrain of the earth wasn’t really well understood. And even in the military world, where they thought they had very classified sophisticated terrain mapping, they really didn’t. And we managed to take technology that came from space shuttle mission, STS 99, if I remember, that did the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission where it mapped essentially 95% of the Earth’s surface, and it took years to mature that data, but all of a sudden, we had flawless terrain database. So we knew where we were right? We have GPS in our iPhones or in our jets. And all of a sudden, we had amazing technology for the terrain we’re flying over. And then we worked on the technology to make sure that the airplane knew as it was flying along, was it going to hit the ground, and if it was, thought it was going to hit the ground, how would it maneuver to take control away from the pilot, and then fly away and all of a sudden, in a two year period, we mature the technology that had been worked on for 25 years, introduced it first to the F-16 than in a version sort of an F-22. But a really good version of an F-35. And today, we have saved um, I’m sure we’re 15 F-16 lives 14 F-16s, you can do that math, that means there’s a two-seat F 16. And there were both pilots were incapacitated, we’ve saved F-22s, we’ve saved F-35s, that conversation is so compelling that it’s being put into the Super Hornet fleet, and ultimately even into the Canadian legacy CF-18 fleet, and it will change for the rest of our aviation lives. Aircraft will no longer hit the ground. And I work now we many of us who worked on it in the test world, volunteer our time and are working on a civilian application of this that’ll go in light airplanes like somebody’s Piper Cub, or somebody’s Cessna 412. Just fascinating part of that. And everybody that’s been a part of it. And many of the Canadian exchange officers have been a part of it in the F-16 world. Everybody’s part of this this chorus now that it has had a little bit of time in the development of it and we all sing the praises and we’re out there telling the story. So that we we make help people understand just what this really means to the aviation world and safety from now on.

TK: Yeah, as recently as 10 years ago, I think I think it was circa 2014. I was down in Arizona for DATEM and refining the Bagdad and Gladden MOAs that are owned by Nellis and there was an F-16 that had a CFIT reflector, rain for our listeners, that was deemed after the fact to be a G-LOC so, G-Loss Of Consciousness for those who are listening, blood is pulled from your head under g-load lose consciousness lose control of the aircraft and the aircraft was lost that day killing the pilot and losing the F-16. And that was only 10 years ago. Roughly give or give or take. So I imagined that as this in the F-16 would have been the the driver for adopting this technology that’s now proliferating into the other platforms. And is that right?

Billie: They don’t know. I guess I’m gonna say it because we started with the F -16 as a platform and we were the Lockheed Martin Company, it was an easy platform to pick for us to go test on. And the experience leading up there up to the point where that I joined the program had been at Edwards using F-16 platforms. I mean, hypothetically, we could have grabbed a two-seat F-15. But we also needed a digital flight control system initially to put it on. So it just became the platform to use and then is part of our development. We had the United States Air Force program guys so that people that run the F-16 were part of our program overseeing things and in my input with all along was it’s great to do this research but it better go in the hands of the operators. And in fact it took another two yours after I was done before it ended up in the fleet. So in the operational world and we killed two more guys in that time period, just because we couldn’t get it in fast enough. And then in the F-35, it wasn’t going to go in until right about now. And some great work by test pilots, the United States Air Force with some help from us. We leapfrog the program plan found a way to shoehorn it in the F-35. And we’ve saved lives and the F-35 already. Lives, you can’t replace. And there’s no price tag to put on that. But we’re saving millions upon millions of dollars of airplanes that would have been lost also, in this effort.

TK: It’s an awesome system. I like to say if it proliferates on to general aviation aircraft as well, it’s just it’s going to have a huge effect across across the whole industry. 

Billie: That’s what’s going on right now. You will have the equivalent of an iPhone, it will be an I’m an iPhone guy, but it will be an Android phone probably to start. But a presentation that will tell you when you’re flying in your Cessna 182, that looks ahead and says, Hey, you’re you’re up, you’re coming against a wall up here, you need to turn you need to pull up now and it’ll know your power, or you need to turn left to avoid the threat on the right hand side. And it everybody will be able to slap this on their airplane and fly with it at some point. And we will not be running into the ground like we have historically. At some point, hopefully in the near future, then not.

TK: Pretty cool to be a part of a program that saving lives like that, because so often and military test your store’s release, you know, you’re you’re at the opposite end. Rather than looking at the how do we how do we insulate our pilots and potentially general aviation pilots from rescue, you’re kind of looking at how do we get optimize a weapon configuration. So it’s pretty cool to be to be a part of both also pretty cool to have seen the the F-16 and the F-35. And to be able to make a distinction between you know, 4.5 Gen block 60 F-16 and then the shift towards what is considered 5th Gen and I am by no means an expert on that. I think you are and so I’d like to hear more from you. But maybe before we get there, you mentioned you know, you gave us a pretty quick actually sweep over and really impressive career. You mentioned that, you know, you’re lucky as far as timing goes and you’re really fortunate to have had the amazing career that you’ve had. But for us, that’s two sides of the same coin. There’s there’s the fortune of being able to do those things. But there’s the huge challenge that goes along with actually being able to execute them. And, you know, any one of a number of things in your career is a huge challenge that would have been, you know, very difficult to strive and achieve and do well. What would you say is if you had to pick one or two, your biggest challenges that you had to overcome in your career?

Billie: Besides legendary impatience, besides astonishing leap or marks and poor study habits that before I started my routine I’ll tell you what I think are the positives in a sense, and rather than challenges and that is I never believed there were margins to hold me and I didn’t know when I picked up the book „The Right Stuff“ that a Canadian could never go to Edwards Air Force Base and do the things I did. I didn’t know no one. I didn’t believe anybody that said oh, if you go to test pilot school, your school your career is over, and you’ll never amount to anything you’ll be stuck in that world forever. I just didn’t believe the naysayers out there. And it is again to go back to a Barack Obama quote: „The Audacity of Hope“. And I just I had a passion. And I have managed to overcome bad study habits because I my enthusiasm overcame my defects and, and I loved this world. And it is flying fighters was my drug of choice for 40 years, more than 40 years. And it was my motivation and I learned through mistakes. I’m not a gifted pilot at all, and I nearly failed early in pilot training. But I learned resilience to overcome that I learned about elasticity at skill sets. And and I just wasn’t going to give up. And and I think because I loved it so much. That’s what helped me know that I would go spend more time in the simulator than everyone else that that my study habits were different than everyone else but I needed to broaden my skill set because I always believed that that there was chaos out there. And I just wasn’t going to believe that on every single day things were going to work out magically well for me and so I think I armed myself with the in a sense of fear or insecurity but really, with the understanding that if I wanted to be good if I wanted to excel, I had to try harder than everyone else. And I and I just loved it. And I guess that makes it easy. And that’s not a very thoughtful answer to at all. But in the end was I dissect go back four decades of it. There is no more there is no more bigger thrill for me than in the last 10 years to strap on in an F-35 and go fly in my worst day was better than most every other day and in lots of other other worlds. So I think that carried me a long long way.

TK: Being passionate about what you do can make up for a lot of the pain to to drill down into that a little bit yet a blog, we talked about you know, the early days you pilot training on the Musketeer and how that shaped your ability to bounce back and be more resilient. You mentioned you know the difference between Gladwell’s approach to the 10,000 hour rule versus deliberate practice, which I found really interesting. Can you explain what you mean by deliberate practice and how that could be applied and in any career choice aviation is one but you know, a healthcare professional surgeon, a doctor, an athlete can apply deliberate practice 

Billie: Or musicians! So for everyone that many people have read Malcolm Gladwell’s books, I love them all. Pop culture associate sociologist. And in in the book: „Outlier“, his book: „Outliers“, he talks about the 10,000 hour rule and he applies, it basically says to be a master at anything, you need to have practiced it or done it for 10,000 hours. And his example was the group The Beatles, which some of your listeners actually won’t even we’re certainly weren’t born when they played. But the Beatles played in Germany for many, many hours for years in bars before they ever came back to the UK and became known. And in his thesis essentially says, You got to practice and do the grunt work. Before you can be good at that. All of that is I believe is true, you have to do the work you have to spend the time. But if all you’re gonna do every day is go to the simulator a simulator and do the same thing or fly the same patterns or go to the weight room and do the same thing every time. Or as a musician, you’re going to play the same music day in day out, you’re not going to get better. And Erickson’s book about Anders Erickson’s book about peak performance talks about something that that I did for a lifetime, but I didn’t I didn’t have a name for it, I didn’t have a theme to link it to, or thesis to tie it to. And that is when you go to practice your music or when you go to the weight room or when you train in the pool as a swimmer or, or as a pilot, you train flying and in do simulation, you work on very specific skills, and you work for very specific conditions to make yourself better each time. And, and so in as a pilot, I wouldn’t go to the simulator and just do the same thing as everyone else I would go and I do the stuff that needed repetition. But I go practice the abnormal things. I’d learned to fly without this the instruments that everybody else was used to flying. And I’d struggle through the simulator to learn how to adapt to that to get myself I don’t know back on the ground when my heads up display failed or my platform failed. And in the simulator, as an air show pilot, I worked on all the emergencies possible, every combination that is not imaginable. And and I would do that so that I would create, the term I use is elasticity, I would I would do things out of the norm. So when bad things happened, I may not have done that exact thing in my non standard simulator practice. But I would have done something abnormal enough that I would have been able to reach over and go oh, you know what things are going really bad right now. And it’s kind of like what I was working on on the SIM in the simulator two weeks ago. And I sort of know what to do. And I’ve created elas, the term is elasticity. And I wouldn’t have done the exactly the same thing. But I certainly would have done more than the norm. And that allowed my skill set to get very focused and ultimately for me to be far better than if I just gone in and you know, done the time. And here’s the example I’ll use most everybody remembers an Air France flight that went from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. Air France 447 was an airliner flying from Brazil back to Paris, and they ran into a major problem up high at altitude where the sensors will just you know what it is and I do but the sensors froze, and effectively the aircraft stalled. The captain was in the back, resting, a ferry pilot was in the left seat. The copilot was in the right seat. The aircraft’s effectively stalled at high altitude and fell a long way down to ultimately hit the water and killed everybody. It was a long way down. Minutes. And the pilot was awakened came to the front and the pilot and the ferry pilot tried to figure out what was happening in all the efforts they they exercise they did to recover the airplane, what they didn’t know is that the pilot in the right seat, the copilot, had his hand on the stick, the side stick, and was pulling back the entire time. Because in his mind, he was trying to fly away. And it defeated everything that the pilots, the captain and the other pilot in the left seat were trying to do. And so everyone died. And the example I use is that pilot, copilot in the right seat, because he had been trained and he’d gone to Sim. He’d done his simulator time, and he certainly had been flying. But he clearly had not done, you know, worked at out of out of the norm situations. And so when something chaotic happened, the only thing he knew to do was what he’d been trained in the very normal, very tight margin world that he trained to, and he didn’t know enough to let go the stick and if you’d let go with the stick, the captain would have been able to fly the aircraft away from the problem ultimately, and then fly away and no one would have died. And I keep coming back to that example. Their worlds and their examples in the test world have been very famous X-plane, the X-31. And it crashed because the control room of engineers in the pilot didn’t know what to do when things went bad on them. And they didn’t recognize the situation. And they the pilot, especially had not practiced, had not done his work had not done things abnormal in his simulations in his training, and was clueless on what to do, he could have saved the airplane instead, he ejected, broke his back and the aircraft was lost. There are many, many cases like that. So for me 10,000 Hour Rule says yes do the work. But peak performance says deliberate practice is how you’re going to excel and how you’re going to perfect what you’re what you’re attempting to master.

TK: Some interesting research out there on the role of heuristics in situational awareness, and a lot of it comes from fighter pilot. There is a good Singaporean study in their F-16 pilots about what separates a junior wingman from an experienced fighter weapons guy in terms of level three situational awareness really being able to project out ahead of what’s what’s happening in the aircraft right now to what its current state will be and what the consequences are of future decisions. And they found the biggest separator was the experienced pilots had built heuristics. And they might not map perfectly onto the scenario that they’re seeing in the aircraft on that occasion like you’re describing, but I’ve seen something similar enough, developed, maybe that elasticity that their working memory resources are far lower to solve the problem, they’ve got a basic heuristic that they can kind of fall back on. And then they can build on that and that the gap between that heuristic and a current situation is much smaller than the novice who’s got nothing. Maybe some of the basic training under very prescribed scenarios, and then you have this significant working memory resource of trying to absorb information, process it and make a decision all at the same time while flying the aircraft. And it doesn’t lead to the same outcomes as the more experienced folks. I think it’s really interesting that you can you’re, you’re drilling down to you can still be experienced, you can have 1000s of hours, but if you’ve only been practicing inside the box, when something outside the box happens, you know, all that experience can still lead you to fly an aircraft into the ocean and kill everybody aboard.

Billie: You asked me about the difference between 4.5 Gen fighters and fifth Gen fighters I took it off in a tangent. It’s funny when I came in, I’ll go one more tangent and then I’m gonna answer which your question. When I joined as that that pipeliner or in the beginning of the fourth Gen world in the Canadian Air Force. We’d had second Gen fighters right we’d had CF-101 Voodoos, we had CF-104 Starfighters and we had the baby jet the CF-5 which is a 1950s design 1960s built airplane. And really we missed an entire generation third Gen airplanes the F-4 being the iconic airplane from that we had a big leap to make and we had a aircraft that was powered by you’re gonna love this and you probably know this two Commodore 64K-equivalent mission computers. It was worth 18 million to 25 million in the day it was uber expensive. We call that the plastic jet. It did magical things and, and I represented a new generation that knew nothing else, but three digital display indicators and a heads up display as a primary flight instrument. And that was so different than the pilots who had flown second Gen fighters and were transitioning. And the example I saw or I often say that four years in to the operational use of the F-18. We the pipeliners were dramatically better than the older guys. Because we didn’t have to learn, we will, all we knew is was fourth Gen and how to fly fourth Gen multi role fighter that was a plastic jet and did amazing things. And they had to unlearn their second Gen habits to then try to catch up to fourth Gen and very few, really, were ever able to do that when we step now into fifth Gen so F-22, very limited, cadre that flew it for the United States Air Force, 189 of them built and really a very closed world uniquely United States Air Force, we really didn’t get enough folks out there to teach us we knew it was powerful, but F-35 broadens are soon to be a 1000 F-35s flying and more than 1000 pilots have flown the jet and and what we know is that my leap my experience, remember, second Gen to forth Gen is the same thing we’re seeing with fourth Gen to fifth Gen. The massive leap forward in this case, the astonishing amounts of information presented to pilots on effectively a big touchscreen EB which is essentially what it is. And in front of on the mask of the $400,000 US by the way, $400,000 US helmet that we wear. The extraordinary amount of sensor data that’s given to the pilot and how they manage that. And and I can fly an F-35. And I can go out into formation and kill the enemy 20-to-1. And we all that flew F-35 have done those things. Because the airplane carries the day, people that our true fifth Gen Jedi Knights grew up in the F-35. And they go out there and and they are they’re always survivable. They always are effective. And they are astonishingly lethal. And then they are better to 20-to-1 than their adversaries every single time. And a younging man or woman gets into an F-35 now. And there’s really four steps that distinguish the trait that is a fifth Gen baby, they metabolize all the data. So they take it all in all of it all. They filter. So they look down there on that massive screen that massive video game and they throw away the bat the the ones that are important, they know where the good guys are. And they focus on the bad guys. They prioritize. So big screen. Now there’s lots of bad guys, they prioritize. So just because someone’s close to you doesn’t mean they’re the biggest threat, because you’re smart enough to know who’s really going to harm you or not. And then they execute they execute their mission. And that may mean killing all the bad guys. Or that may mean avoiding the bad guys who can’t see you because you’re a stealthy platform, and you’re invisible, and then taking care of the target wherever it is. But whatever that is they execute. So they metabolize, they filter, they prioritize and execute. And a fifth Gen baby who doesn’t know an F-16, who’s never flown a Boeing Super Hornet never been in a Gripen and a Eurofighter and F-15 doesn’t have any of those bad habits. And back in those fourth Gen days, we were the fusion algorithm we were that we were the machine that had to gather all the data four different screens and a helmet and already presented information, really presented data and put it all together and figure out how to what to do. And oh, by the way, we had to talk to each other on the radios. And none of that’s done. Now it’s done by an algorithm that tells us who the good guys or the bad guys are. We know it’s so sophisticated that we trust it every time. And a fourth, fifth Gen baby gets in there and eats it up. And and is so much more lethal than any of us as good as pilots as we may be. Whatever the age group, as we transition from forth Gen to fifth Gen. We will never be as good as the fifth Gen babies, which is I don’t go back 40 years the old guys were never going to be as good as my peers that my peers maybe not me. My peers were as fourth Gen babies in the Hornet and that’s really what distinguishes it. It’s not about flying the airplane. It’s about being incredibly survivable and lethal with all the all the knowledge that’s presented to the pilot in the cockpit.

TK: I’ve never had to put that way the metabolize, filter, prioritize execute for fifth Gen. That’s a big takeaway for me. And I have, again, so many questions. So how do you select for fifth Gen pilots, if you’re trying to design an aircrew aptitude selection moment, you know, the CAF has adopted and is modifying a version of the RAF aircraft to test the RAFAT for the Canadian Forces, we’ve kind of replaced CAPS that I went through many, many moons ago. And it’s prioritized executive function, because even before fifth Gen, I think, folks started to recognize there’s a lot more data in the cockpit, even just with your digital displays, and perhaps there was in the past, and maybe a few, if you have some kind of proxy for measuring your executive function in terms of inhibiting, updating, shifting, can you suppress relevant stimuli, prioritize what needs to be done, not get channelized attention, be able to divide your attention amongst multiple displays, and so on. But the roles, substandard approaches, you know, they’re just proxy tests, and we do the best we can with selection and then you go through training and you would train probably from the Musketeer through the Tutor and where you flying F-5 at 419? And then the Hornet of course. Guys do the T-6. the Hawk, or they used to up until very recently, and then the Hornet and now it’ll be, you know, maybe the PC-21 soon, some version of an OUTCAN posting to either Italy, Finland or the US for a face forward flip and then coming back to the to the F-35. So we’re gonna get guys ultimately are on the same squadron but have flown, excuse me, very different aircraft types, whether it’s the Aermacchi 346, or the Hawk T2 or the T-38. I assume that training products are in terms of the syllabus, the amount of AI missions you do, the amount of ACM, DFM and so on will be roughly comparable, but the platform is very different. And maybe the culture of the training environments quite different as well. Do you have any, maybe advice for the Canadian Forces and other air forces? Having flown everything from you know, F-5s and Tutors all the way through block 60 F-16 and F-35. Is there a big difference, you think in the the quality of the candidate that’s moving out of an F-35 coming off, a 346 Airmacchi versus a T-38, or does it start way before that in terms of the selection of who we even send to those platforms?

Billie: Let’s talk about selection and some ideas about that. And then let’s talk about how you know how we produce a product for that. I have studied different ideas of how to weed people up and select them and mentor them through their development and think of European football soccer and soccer academies in Spain, or Italy where they pick up young kids, I don’t know 11,12, 13, 14, even 14 might be too late. And they put him in academies. And they watch them and they track them with data now. And they follow them through the careers and the the analytics can tell them even though you and I intuitively could watch some kid and think he’s better than everyone else. But the data as they follow them through their development will show who are the kids who are going to be rock stars and shows at least the talent element of that. And I wonder if we’ve looked at this we, myself and some other researchers of how you would apply this in a military context. When you pick up a candidate as they join the military and you start tracking them through their career progression through the courses, certainly in flying. Do we see you know, rock star talent early on? And what’s out there that would help us do that. And as much as I think there would be utility to that. There’s some intangibles that really matter. We’re, we’re talking about fighter pilots, not airline pilots. And what do I care about? Well, I care about going to war. And what I really care about is building war fighters and ultimately warriors which is not the same as a warfighter I can send someone to combat they can do they can fight in an in some operation, but doesn’t make them a warrior. What I want is to build warfighters in as many warriors as I can, and there comes the intangible there comes the courage and the character that comes from someone under stress under real stress of someone shooting at you and your job is to go out and kill bad guys. And so this notion of a soccer academy process of weeding people out and using data analytics to help that kind of falls apart when it’s the intangibles of you know, who’s the guy in the football team that is the leader that, you know, you saw the stats, and he wasn’t that fast. And he wasn’t that strong yet he leaves he’s ferocious on a soccer field or on a football field or on a hockey on the hockey ice, on the rink, in the rink. And I, I’ve seen that in 40 years of all those countries, I’ve flown in all the cultures. I’ve seen these guys who just don’t look the part, you know that they’re, they’re not the Tom Cruise’s, Val Kilmer’s, they’re not there. The girls aren’t hanging around them at bars. But when it came to combat, they were astonishing. They were warriors. And, and so I’m not sure how I can select now let’s pick Okay, so that’s, I throw that out there. Let’s talk about what I expect from this generation, and what people think of this generation. And then see where we go from this because old people that would be all of my era, and even the the generation behind, have no time for this gig economy, you know, the Gen Z crowd, and soon the Gen Alpha crowd. You know, they’re not loyal to anything, the gig economy, they’re going from one good job to the next, they don’t have the same work ethic, as we did, you know, they live on iPhones or on their phones or head down all day, they’re multitasking, they don’t pay attention to anything. And the reality is, that all that might be true, and we have four boys aged 20 to 30. So we’re pretty clear about all those bad habits of all that generation. But we also understand that they could do things in a fighter jet, or in a space vehicle, or in a helicopter, any flying vehicle in combat. That no, none, no other generation before them, could they because they can do those four things: metabolize, filter, prioritize and execute more efficiently, more efficiently, more effectively, than any other human ever. And, and I also believe that when you start firing bullets at them, and they go to combat, they’re going to be no different than my generation was, or the generation before me or the generation before that, and they’re actually going to deliver and they’re going to show up, and they’re going to be as lethal, as survivable, as effective as any other generation before. And I say that without any data, but I can tell you that my father, and my friends were fighter pilots, their fathers of the same era, never thought we’d ever mount anything. You know, we were we didn’t work as hard as them. And we were we didn’t study as hard. We played around too much. And, you know, bunch of this generation did, okay. And so I look at the gig, the gig economy crowd, the Gen Z crowd and go, you know, give them cut them some slack, when people start shooting at them, they’re going to they’re going to amount to something. So I don’t know how you filter them out. I do believe that there’s couraging character that’s required in there. And I think we sell them short. And we just haven’t seen them under the stresses. And when we do, we’ll see that they’re very, very capable. So I don’t I don’t know a perfect answer. I do know this about the example used. And I just wrote a blog about it, which is really me taking a shot at the Canadian, Royal Canadian Air Force for canceling sovereign fighter pilot lead-in training and farming it out to the United States to Italy and to Finland. What I know is that we take guys off the street like you, like me, like everyone we know in all the services, run-of-the-mill men and women, and that we that we put them in a system. And we teach them these things, and we teach them how to fly. And we teach them responsibility and decision independent decision making. We give them a astonishing responsibility incredibly early in life, and at an incredibly early rank level. And they excel, and they make mistakes we reel them in when we when they make mistakes, but then we let them out again, we know we have a leash on them. And all of a sudden, they can assume the responsibility. But you watch a commander of a tanker, a US Air Force KC-10 tanker, who ferries jets across the Pacific and the Atlantic on any given day of the week, and I’d been a part of 15 transatlantic ops in my career. And you see a 29 year old, who’s in charge of his tanker airplane, a KC-10, dragging six F-16s from Fort Worth, Texas to Seville, Spain, and then the next two days later from Spain all the way to the Middle East. And he’s a 29 year old in charge of the lives and the operation of six fighter jets and a tanker airplane just as one example. And that’s the kind of transformation that we accomplish in our militaries, bringing kids off the street and you know, turning them into amazing adults. And I really think that our system is incredibly good at that. And so you bring that finished this last tangent, bringing fighter pilot trainees back from the United States back from Italy and back from Finland and Canadianize them give them responsibility early on, teach them how to think independently, and we’re going to turn them into amazing pilots for the future.

TK: I couldn’t agree more. I spent a lot of time in the training system as an instructor and I saw some changes in recent years with the approach to training and the resources that were available, not all training in the right direction. I think that’s a thread I’d like to pull out. Maybe we can circle back to it at the end if we have time. But I also want to talk a little bit about the the warriorship comment. And it might be a nice segway into Op Allied Force as well. I remember, you know, in your blog, about Op Allied Force, some references to preparation and equipment procurement for NVGs, prior to going into into theater, and it made me think about some of the some of the great bosses that I’ve had in the past who were absolute warriors, and who were kind of the friction in an organization that the superiors didn’t necessarily appreciate all the time because they’re a squeaky wheel. And peacetime those warriors can can be, you know, peacetime can be a hard place for a warrior. When you’re operationally minded and you want you have perspective on what needs to be done. But you’re perceived as kind of a nuisance to those who would prefer to just keep things status quo. And then I can think of bosses that were the opposite, you know, the ultimate peacetime staff officer. And there’s a big difference between the two…

TK: Hallo Leute und willkommen beim Dicerra Podcast. Ich bin Theon te Koeti, CEO und Gründer von Dicerra. Im Dicerra Podcast sprechen wir über die menschliche Leistung in der Luftfahrt und im Gesundheitswesen. Heute sind wir in der Innenstadt von Ottawa. Dies ist die „Zwischen zwei Farnen”-Ausgabe, ich bin hier mit Paul Kissman, einem der erfahrensten Piloten Kanadas. Er hat einen beeindruckenden Lebenslauf, war ein ehemaliger Kampfpilot bei den kanadischen Streitkräften, flog F5s und F18s. Als experimenteller Testpilot ausgebildet bei Empire und wurde der Chef-Testpilot der Royal Canadian Air Force und später der Chef-Testpilot des National Research Council of Canada. Außerdem war er Chef-Pilot für Vintage Wings Canada und fliegt nun möglicherweise in einem etwas anderen Tempo als Kapitän eines A330 bei Air Canada und ist auch der führende Luftfahrtberater von Dicerra. Wir haben also großes Glück, dass du sowohl in der Show als auch bei Dicerra dabei bist. Paul, warum fängst du nicht damit an, uns ein wenig darüber zu erzählen, wie du hierher gekommen bist?

PAUL: Nun, zunächst einmal, vielen Dank für die Einladung, sowohl bei Dicerra mitzuwirken als auch bei diesem Podcast. Ich hatte das Glück, eine erfolgreiche Karriere zu haben. Ich begann meine Karriere und muss den Luftkadetten danken. Ich begann dort als 16-Jähriger und bekam meinen Segelflugschein, bevor ich überhaupt einen Führerschein hatte. Das ebnete mir den Weg in die militärische Luftfahrt, gab mir einen Einblick in die Kultur und schuf eine Referenz, auf die das Militär blicken konnte und sagen konnte, ja, dieser Junge könnte eines Tages etwas sein. So bin ich wirklich viel diesem Prozess zu Dank verpflichtet. Ich hatte Glück, ich hatte damals gute Augen, man musste unbehandelte 20/20-Sicht haben. Es gab allerlei Stolpersteine, die man nicht beeinflussen konnte. Heute sind die Dinge etwas flexibler, man kann mit Brille oder Laserchirurgie durchkommen, das konnten wir damals nicht. Also bin ich auch dankbar für mein Glück, sei es in der Gesundheit oder bei all den Hindernissen, die es gab, um in die Armee zu kommen. Zum Beispiel bin ich direkt zu den Kampfjets gekommen, viele wollten Kampfjets. Als ich meinen Kurs begann, wollten 34 von 36 in Moose Jaw Kampfjets, am Ende bekamen wir vier Plätze. Also hatte ich das Glück, einer dieser vier zu sein, und das hat mich dann durchgezogen. Dann zur Testpilotenschule, und es war ein Glücksfall und eine angenehme Erfahrung nach der anderen.

TK: So when we’re talking about human performance, we could almost subdivide it. And do you have a opinion as to the importance of personality? As compared with, say, a skill or an aptitude when it comes to peak performance in aviation?

PAUL: Wow, great question. You know, even to this day, we screen for pilots for the military, or for an airline or whatever, or be it for an astronaut in the Canadian Space Agency, they screen highly now for personality and your personality and your adaptation to the culture. And all these things are what will allow you to excel within that environment. If you’re not willing to keep working hard to keep learning, to keep your humility to a reasonable extent, in the environment that you’re in, it’s tough to really get better. It really is.

TK: And it just occurred to me while you’re talking, we’re talking about the effect of having too many layers that don’t really increase safety, but start to decrease efficiency. That reminded me of anecdote from a friend who was in the first ROTO of a Middle East deployment of the Hornet. Six pack of Hornets launched without actually having formal orders and got them airborne, along with the tanker packages are heading across the ocean. They found that they were extremely flexible when they first arrived. And, you know, able to employ effectively. Run a significant number of sorties with a very, very small team of highly, highly motivated people. But then over time, as the ROTO grew, the the wedge behind the front end grew and grew and grew and became a bit of a self licking ice cream and 

PAUL: The bureaucracy.

TK: It became less effective, less efficient, harder to get things done, despite the fact that with all of the additional personnel and resources, he should have been easier. I just wonder if you have other examples of that, in aviation, throughout your career, whether it’s in the military side or on the civi side? And what are the what are the markers where you see it start to happen, and you can steer the course, steer the ship away from it before it gets here?

PAUL: Well, I’m trying very hard not to say fixed wing search and rescue in the military. Which is the program I was involved in. I’ll pause the sentence there and say, whenever I have been involved in a highly successful test program, flying program, something very challenging. It has been because the authority, and the ability to get the result has been moved down to the lowest possible level. 

TK: Power to the edges. 

PAUL: You bet power to the edges, you really have to empower your people that are at the cold face that are getting the job done. The more that power gets vacuumed up into higher levels of management, or leadership or whatever you want to call it, depending on where you are. The more paralyzing it is to success. There is nothing gained by some general or some colonel poking way down into the weeds trying to control flight test program or a operational implementation program. Because they just aren’t close enough to the problem. And the more you can trust your expert center at the coalface that are doing the job. You’ll have way more success. It sort of comes back to that discussion earlier about the ejection seat. You know, that was a colonel that was a rare bird heard and again, the pun but and he and I just looked at each other mano a mano, and I said, boss, trust us, we can do this. And he did. And it wasn’t me. It was my team. You know, I had some really talented folks that are still working in the same field today. But you have to allow that to happen if you vacuum this up and create this bureaucracy behind the coalface, the game. It’s really just CYA, right? They’re covering their asses. They want control because they’re fearful of a negative outcome that might end up looking like it was their responsibility. But the reality is, when you’re at that level, you can’t control that many things. It’s impossible to have control over all the programs, all the fleets, all the aircraft, all the pilots, you’d be working 5000 hours a day to try and do that. So the more that you can put the right people in the right place and the right job and empower them to do it and give them the authority, that’s success.

TK: Actually kind of reminds me and it’s not an aviation anecdote, but the Hurricane Katrina response in New Orleans, where the government wanted to retain centralized control and ultimately slowed them down to a fault. Whereas I think it was Walmart, who was on the ground pushing power to the edges, and was briefing their stores to say, do whatever you can do what’s right, communicate with us as best you can make decisions on the ground. And I think it was Walmart that got water and, and their pharmacy supplies out the fastest. 

PAUL: You bet. 

TK: Really irrelevant. But the, it also reminds me a little bit of, if you’re a junior captain, in the Air Force, the level of responsibility that you have, as an aircraft commander of whatever it is that you’re flying, whether it’s single pilot high performance, you’re on the road in the US with 2, 3, 4 jets, or whether you’re on an air mobility platform, and you’re you’re the AC. People don’t realize, but you’re also the dispatcher, and you’re the flight planner, and when the weather is poor, and you’re supposed to go to the airport X, you’re replanning to airport Y and it is generally the faith entrusted that all of the training to that point, you can make the right decision and nobody’s going to jump down into your. You’re the mayor of cockpit city, you’re going to make the right choice, you’re gonna get to wherever you need to get to and make it safe. And occasionally, you have to call back home to get a diplomatic clearance because you’re flying over a different country and you know, get a new lift message cut from the CAOC. But in general, it always surprised me how much latitude is given to, you know a 25, a 26-year old captain flying a multimillion dollar piece of equipment? Probably to a country I’ve never been to before.

PAUL: And I think you’ll see the output of that is how well regarded our people are in their next careers. You know, in the flight test construct, you know, the most senior and talented pilots that I know from my flight test world are now you know, VP operations at Boeing, head at Cessna, head at Bombardier, and on and on. And this is in a multinational construct. These are Canadians that are out there that are leading in their fields. And I think it harkens back to exactly what you just said, which is that responsibility that were given early on. And so it does work at times for sure. I think culturally, that’s how it’s been. I don’t know that we’re there today in the Canadian Forces. I think we’ve had a pretty big setback in experience and with that, also, a power being vacuumed up the hill in the command levels. A paralysis by analysis, and oversight, that might produce a different pilot. In the next generation. We’ll see how it goes. When we talk again, hopefully in 20 years, we’ll I’m still kicking. And we’ll look at this again and see who’s out there. And how are we doing internationally leading the way? Or is there going to be an echo of this? You know current situation.

TK: Those personalities that you mentioned, the, you know, the Canadians that came up through our aviation system and are are now leaders in the industry. The Chris Hadfield’s and the Billy Flynn’s and people like yourself, would probably also look back on training and simulation, which we mentioned earlier, and say the quality of the training was was very, very good. That’s what allowed them and yourself and other aviators to be safe and to be operationally effective, where perhaps other folks without that training in the same situation would not have been safe or effective. How would you, you know, explained the importance of safety and simulation in particular mentioned Air Canada simulation, so accurate in their simulators that the first time you actually fly is with passengers. To developing a safety mindset, as well, so not just your procedural proficiency with the aircraft that you’re flying, but the the attitude that you have.

PAUL: Yeah, I mean, the attitude comes from how you grew up through the system in learning to be a pilot, and also from the culture of the organization that you’re in. We’ll flavor that for sure. Simulation, done right, I think will always increase safety because we can simulate a lot of critical events. You know, I just came through, you know, wide-body training at Air Canada onto a new platform. And the process, nose to tail was about three months. And people say: „how the heck does that take three months?“ How was it possible that you took three months to go through a training, you know. And it’s funny because if I was in the test world, it would have been one week, maybe two, you would read some books, you would have gone flying. But it’s a totally different mission, and a totally different safety construct. You know, in the airline world, from a safety perspective, we have to have an organization with 1000s of pilots, I have to be able to just reach into the bucket of names and pull two names out and say you two are flying together. And the fact that we’ve never seen each other don’t know each other, we have to operate as effectively as two buddies who’ve done this for years together. So there is a an enormous reliance on standard operating procedures, what is said, who says what when, how you operate, who’s overseeing, while somebody’s pushing buttons, who’s flying when somebody’s talking. And that portion of the culture, under the standard operating procedures is what drives the safety, because they have a different challenge, right? If you’re on a squadron with 12 pilots, and you all know each other, you fly together all the time, there’s a lot of inherent flexibility that you’ll get, because you’re just familiar familiar with each other. And you can possibly have a less stringent level of standard operating procedures and more flexibility. If you’re on an airline, and you’re going to pick two names out of the hat. It’s just not that way. And so simulation allows us to learn all those SOPs and how we’re going to operate. It also allows us to simulate failures that hopefully you won’t see once in your career. You know, the one that we talked about, at at length was, you know, some kind of a critical failure over the ocean. You know, you’re we’re mostly flying two engine jet aircraft now over the ocean back in the day, it was more often four-engined aircraft. Now, there’s only a few of those left, the A380, the A340, the 747. There’s a few of those around but generally speaking, you know, certainly at Air Canada, we’re flying two-engined aircraft across the ocean, which with which brings with it certain requirements, regulatory requirements. So 

TK: ETOPS? 

PAUL: Yes, we call ETOPS. And you have to learn how that works. You have to learn, hey, if this happens, we’re in the middle of night, it’s we’re at 40,000 feet, we’re over the dark, stormy Atlantic Ocean, and we lose an engine or we have an engine fire. What are we going to do and what order? What’s the most important thing? What’s the next most important thing, and we don’t really have an overwhelming amount of time to have a debate in the cockpit, right? I mean, the captain is still the captain, the first officer supports but you both will provide input to the to the solution that you come to, but you have to have thought about this ahead of time. And simulation is absolutely critical, and allowing us to do some of those things. In the relative safety of a, you know, you might spill your coffee in the sim, that’s about all that will ever happen. But because you’re so immersed in a very real environment, believe me, you’ll sweat in the sim. And you’ll think it’s real, you’ll forget that there’s nobody back there. So that’s what takes so long, long answer to your short question. But that’s what takes so long. That’s what builds the safety culture. And I think again, it depends on the mission, right? In the airline mission, because of how we operate, it’s a different scenario.

TK: Do you have an opinion on Air Canada’s reporting system as compared with the flight safety system, or any other flight safety reporting system with, with the other organizations you’ve flown with?

PAUL: I think they’ve they’ve come full circle to be very similar. I think as we’ve gotten along in the years of flight safety being reported, it’s become more practical, you know, we have it on a tablet, you can populate your flight safety report in flight. And when you reconnect to Wi Fi, it’ll automatically send. So you know, pilots are lazy. We don’t want to sit down after the flight and do your writing. If we can have a quiet moment at cruise when we’re not the pilot flying we have a few minutes we can start writing out their flight safety report. So part of that culture is make it easy, because pilots are lazy. You know, I say that tongue in cheek but but in reality, the easier that you can respond. Yeah, the easier you can make the reporting structure, the better off you are, the more familiar it is. So in this app driven world, we fly with iPads everywhere we go. In most of the modern aviation fields, and even in fighters, they’ve got iPads. So, you know, here we go. We got an iPad, we got an app. The culture is established in the organization for there to be no retribution for your report. And so you’ve set the table for the operator to feel absolutely confident about reporting. And I think that is the key. And I think that’s that is pan-organizational to where I’ve been in the last 20 years even, you know, I think the National Research Council was one place that I that I was ended being chief pilot that where we had to work a little bit at creating that culture there were a little bit behind in terms of understanding that there wasn’t retribution. So we had to really create that culture still there. But I’d come from other places that had it. So it was it was easier to make it happen.

TK: Do you get preventative measures pushed out? Through Air Canada channels? Do they aggregate the data or the reports that are coming in, do their own analysis, and then if you know, something meets the threshold of hey, there’s a preventative measure, we should push out, they just push it to your to your iPads, or, 

PAUL: Yeah, we get it via Chief Pilot Notes. So each fleet has a chief pilot, and they do a great job of sometimes modifying the standard operating procedures, sometimes is a change to the flight operations manual that reflects a new reality that we need to consider. There, so the information flows back and forth, for sure, that doesn’t go into a void. It’s analyzed, I mean, we even have we call gatekeepers, that monitor the flight data of all flights. And if there is an excursion of some sort in terms of configuration, or speed, or bank angle, or approach criteria, or whatever, it’s flagged automatically. It goes to the gatekeeper, they look at it. And they’ll call the crew and say, Hey, on this approach into airport X, Y, and Z at this time, we saw that this happened. Can you tell us what a little bit more of what was going on? So that’s a case where perhaps the crew was unaware, which happens, right? You get busy. And you didn’t realize that you had, you know, pushed beyond one limit or another in terms of the standard operating procedures. But it creates a short term full circle, to maybe they go hey, that, well, we didn’t report that. So let’s report that. And so if it doesn’t come to mind, of the crew, it’s another way of pushing the safety out and monitoring safety. 

TK: So yeah, that’s fascinating. I didn’t realize I had that capability. But I bet it keeps pilots flying that approach the plus and minus a couple of knots and make sure they configure exactly on time and land on the 1000 foot markers with that. Well, and deviations.

PAUL: And that’s your friend, right? You know, in modern aviation now. You know, they’re meeting every every year these international councils, be it ICAO, or be it to European EASA folks or the FAA transport and they’re trying to establish a forward looking hitlist, if you will, you know, what, what’s the most important thing to us to try and make aviation safer and when we’re talking about, you know, the bigger airplanes here, you know, over 7000, some odd kilos up into the airliner world commercial aircraft operators, and their things like topically, runway incursions. So those who follow the news will have seen in Japan, the 777 that unfortunately collided with the Coast Guard Dash airplane. That was a runway incursion, it seems I mean, they’re still analyzing the data. So I don’t want to talk out of school too far. But regardless, you ended up having an aircraft landing on the runway that is occupied by another aircraft. And they collided and very sadly, some lives were lost on board the Dash-8. But that’s one of the that’s one of the five on the hit list. Like we already know, looking forward, we’re trying to solve runway incursions because we know how deadly they can be.

TK: Deadliest crash in the world. Tenerife was.

PAUL: Tenerife. Two 747s in the fog, right. And runway excursions are the next one. Ironically, I think yesterday, United, I think it was American Airlines feeder, and it was a feeder airline in Rochester slid off of a runway in snowy conditions. So runway excursions, meaning you unintentionally leave the taxiway or the runway during a takeoff or landing or maneuvering on the airfield. We already know that this is a really important issue to solve. And so forward looking, some companies are bringing either policies in place, or technologies into place to help us reduce the likelihood things like that happening. So this is where the safety network now starts to move forward. Right? Instead of just being a rearward looking mirror. That doesn’t help us in the future. Now it’s like okay, so we know this is on our top five, what are we doing to help solve this problem? And so I am encouraged by us identifying those things, how well we do it, you know, school’s out still, we just got to keep working hard at it.

TK: Being able to push it out rather than as an operator having to draw that information or try and find it framed wherever. Does Air Canada coordinate with other airlines or with NASA through their ASRS? To try and draw out lessons learned from other?

PAUL: I don’t know, because I’m not involved in the actual safety cell of the airline. I’m more on the operator side. So what goes on behind those scenes and how they interface with other operators? I’m not sure. But I’d be, you know, I do know they attend conferences that are multi-disciplinary and multi-airline. So I’m sure there’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes, but I’m just not the one to ask the question.

TK: Well, we’d be remiss if we didn’t talk about, or I didn’t ask you a war story question. Can you think of a time in your career with any of the organizations that you flew with? Where safety culture played a role in your decision making in a challenging environment and challenging situation?

PAUL: Yeah, for better or for worse, shall we say? If you go back to Gulf War One in Iraq, I was on 433 Squadron, and we were deployed to a Red Flag exercise in Nellis. And it was on the Thursday of the week that we were there that the fighting started. And we got a call from the general and back then, Canada was there was a division at at 30 West, which is a longitude, where east of that was the European Command. And a gentleman over there was in charge of our forces, because we still had fighters in Europe back then. Because we’re going to

TK: F5s in Germany. Sorry we’re talking Gulf War.

PAUL: In the 90s, right? We’re talking the early 90s here. So we had we had F-18s teams in Europe, and they were under one commander, and everything to the west of that 30 West Line was North America and there was a different commander. So we were as 433 in Bagotville, Quebec. We were under that North American commanders command. The war starts, and they call us down on Nellis and go, boys, you’re sending six airplanes, six pilots, and we want you there on Sunday. And we are in Nellis in the middle of an exercise in the sun, and it’s Thursday. So this is where the operational imperative interfaced with safety to try and turn that corner, we had to pack up, get the airplanes, first of all back to Bagotville. Then we had to get our personal affairs somewhat in order. So including getting immunizations, getting wills drawn up. Because we were not yet as much of a wartime Air Force. I think as they are today, we weren’t as triggered and ready to go. So there, there was a lot of work behind the scenes that had to happen. We had to get a tanker organized, we had to figure out ways to get across the ocean to try and get to the theater. Of course, the big war is on, you can’t find a tanker. Right. They’re all in theater. They’re busy. So now we have to figure out how to get across the ocean with a six pack of F-18s by hopping our way across World War Two style. Right, this is back to the Bomber Command. Dragon Lancaster’s in Halifax across the ocean, or even fighters for that matter. And so what we would normally worry about like crew rest. Well, you can imagine how little sleep we got between the Thursday and the Sunday, right? We were all absolutely shattered. And when the weather in Bagotville turns into 100 and a 1/4 in driving snow and minus I don’t know how much as time to go. Well, we went. And we went to Sondestrom, Greenland first. And that’s where we got our gas.

TK: That’s a whole other set of challenges flying into Greenland. 

PAUL: A whole other set of challenges, and then out of there to go to Iceland, and that’s where we plan to overnight. Well, you know, we’re in Sondestrom. And we come out to our airplanes after a long first hop. And five of the six are refueled and one is not. And we’re wearing immersion suits and G suits and we’ve got bags and helmets and publications. And I mean, it’s an effort to get yourself strapped into the airplane. And it wasn’t until we strapped in, got our APUs on and got the radios going that we heard from one of the guys hey, I don’t have gas. So now you’re sitting there. It’s the middle of the night. You’re absolutely shattered. And no kidding. We said okay, well, the five out of the five of us that had gas said Well, I’m not going back inside. I’m going to sit here until you get gas. And I literally fell asleep in the airplane. And I woke up when the sixth guy got gas and started his airplane and the APU went on. And I heard wrrrrr. It’s like, oh, you know. So that’s where, you know, safety versus operational imperative really got trimmed, right? The operational imperatives was extremely high, perhaps not in small part due to our fighter pilot personalities and wanting to go go go go go and and make sure we help defend the Western priorities. But yeah, there are times when you you know, like that was one classic where where we really, you know, safety got shaved way down and mission got X loaded. And in retrospect, we look at it now going well, what were we thinking, you know, we should have taken more time.

TK: That’s wild. I mean, it’s non-trivial flying into Greenland in the winter at the best of times, let alone when you’re on min crew rest. It’s snowing, nighttime, and you’re in a fighter as well, which is significantly less comfortable and higher workload for the approach than flying on a RNAV arrival. 

PAUL: Yes. 

TK: That’s, that’s wild. And so and then via Iceland. Shannon?

PAUL: Yeah. Absolutely Shannon and then into Baden–Soellingen. And back in the day 4 Wing. Yeah.

TK: How long were you there for?

PAUL: Well, back to that delineation of authority that we talked about earlier between the two generals. When we got there, the general from the 4 Wing, you know, CENTAF I think it was called back then or I can’t remember the TAF but he came to us and said: „Thanks for the airplane guys have a good flight home.“ And we were like: „What do you mean, thanks for the airplane. Have a good flight home.“ And so then I guess the generals got into discussion, there had been a misunderstanding. So they arm wrestled, I guess. And in the end, he came back said: „Listen, you guys have a choice. You can go back home. Give us the airplanes, we’ll take him into theater.“ Because we had 433 squadron was the last squadron formed. So we had the latest model of the airplane. Not that they were different. But they were just really good airplanes. They were super serviceable, pristine, low hours, and they wanted those airplanes in theater. And so they gave us a choice that you can go back home, get your affairs really sorted out and come back in three weeks to go into theater. Or you can go now. And so being team oriented as you are on a squadron. We said: „No, you know what, we’d rather come back with our whole squadron.“ We’ll come back in three weeks. And those of us who know our history know that three weeks is all it took. And, and it was over unfortunately, I think for everyone that was the end of that the air campaign. And we never did go. But yeah, it was quite an interesting time.

TK: Okay. Why don’t we finish up with you explaining to the listeners and viewers what it was like as a commanding officer of a fighter squadron.

PAUL: Boy, the pleasure of my life, to be honest. I had a fantastic squad and I inherited it from Rich Foster, who’s just a super leader later to be three star general. He should have commanded the Air Force, in my opinion. And so the squadron was in great working order when I got it, which is either an opportunity or not, it depends on how you look at it. I think if you’re a commanding officer taking over a squadron, and it comes to you in pretty much perfect condition, your first thought is don’t screw it up. Right. But I got on some majors that were amongst the best people I’ve ever worked with. And, you know, back to the philosophy of pushing the authority, responsibility down to the lowest common denominator. I know I tried to do that, because that was what always ticked me off when I was in their shoes was not getting that ability that opportunity. So that’s how I tried to leave the squadron. But let’s be honest, when you have these super duper folks that are working with you on a squadron, that’s what they’re doing. They’re working with you. Sure, in the military, there’s a gradient and you’re the boss at the end of the day. I tried to just make sure that meant that I was a shit shield, and that they could do their job. And so I was blessed with just a wonderful, wonderful crew. And so the experience front to back, the technicians that we had, the maintenance organization, intel, supply, they were just all fabulous. And all I all I tried to do was to make sure that we enabled folks to do their job the way they felt was the best way to do it as long as it fell within our objectives. At the end of the day when we left, the squadron unfortunately got closed. Tt was part of a restructuring of the Air Force trying to find some positions. But in that last year, we had the highest flying rate of a fighter squadron in the Canadian Forces out of the five squadrons. We had the highest service ability rate, and those don’t go together, right? Necessarily, like normally when you fly hard, you can’t. 

TK: You break things.

PAUL: You break things, and they don’t work work well. But you know, I just had this inherent belief in the people, and rightly so they were fantastic at what they were doing. And I can still remember, you know, it’s certainly, it’s funny how the small snippet of stories that stayed with you over the years, but we had been blessed, you know, you go and do a morning briefing with the maintenance staff and the pilots every morning before you start your day, called the ops briefing. And during that, they’ll inform the commanding officer and his staff, you know, what the status is of the squadron? How many airplanes do we have, the scheduler will say, here’s what our plan is, for the day, we’re going to fly this many airplanes on one or two waves of launches. And this is what we’re trying to achieve. And that’s sort of set out in a weekly and a monthly objective. And we’d always had, what we needed to do it. Maintenance always provided the airplanes. When we came in this one Monday morning, and the maintenance officer had the sheepish look on his face. And he comes up he goes, you know, listen, Boss, we’ve only got two airplanes serviceable. And, you know, we just had a couple things go wrong, blah, blah, blah, some inspections came in, or whatever it was, right. But this hadn’t happened in two years. And he just goes, listen, we can give you two, we can do a two-turn-one. So he fly two in the morning, fly one in the afternoon, and, and my scheduler is pushing, Oh, I gotta get these missions done cause I want to upgrade this guy. And I want to do this. And I kind of just looked at at my squadron maintenance officer and said: „Listen, how long do you need to get us eight airplanes?“ And, you know, he came back. And I should remember the number of days, I think it was two or three days. He said, boss, I need like a couple of couple or three days, I just looked at my training officer said, Alright, put on some ground school were given the maintenance all the airplanes and looked at him and says you have one job is to get us get us back on the pile. And that was, you know, the there was grumbling in the pilot community because they all love to fly right there. You know, your leashing the dogs and they’re not happy. But, you know, it was one of those examples of trusting your maintenance organization that they’re giving you the best they can. And that if you give an opportunity to recover from an unusual situation that they will and that really defined how we operated it was really enabling the people to excel and and I had great people. So.

TK: I like a happy ending. Paul. Right on. Let’s wrap up there, and let me express my infinite gratitude for your time and for coming on board with Dicerra. I can’t wait for the next conversation in there. There will be another one. We’ll have you back on the podcast again.

PAUL: Well, I’m looking forward to pushing safety to a new level, you know, and, and finding a way for us to even evolve further in the aviation field, even though we know the medical field needs a lot of help here. But even in the aviation field, like I said, keep learning, keep getting trying to get better and that’s what we hopefully will do. 

TK: Excellent. Cheers Paul. 

PAUL: Well, thanks again. 

TK: Thanks.